THE VICTORIAN ERA 



BY 



SAMUEL INSULL 



SPEECH MADE AT THE VICTORIA DAY LUNCH- 
EON OF THE PRINCE OF WALES CHAPTER OF 
THE IMPERIAL ORDER OF DAUGHTERS OF THE 
BRITISH EMPIRE, AT THE AUDITORIUM HOTEL, 
CHICAGO, MAY 20, 1916 






. 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



BY 

SAMUEL INSULL 



SPEECH MADE AT THE VICTORIA DAY LUNCH- 
EON OF THE PRINCE OF WALES CHAPTER OF 
THE IMPERIAL ORDER OF DAUGHTERS OF THE 
BRITISH EMPIRE, AT THE AUDITORIUM HOTEL, 
CHICAGO, MAY 20, 1916 



CHICAGO 
1916 



Copyright, 1916, by Samuel Insull 



JUL-3 1916 
©CI.A433584 



^ I . 



J1AS&] 
• IS" 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 

By Samuel Insull 

I feel a great sense of embarrassment when I appear 
before an audience mainly composed of ladies. With one 
exception, this is the only occasion upon which I have been 
called upon to address an audience composed of women, and 
I can assure you that it is a very different thing to addressing 
an audience of men. My experience is that it is pretty diffi- 
cult to keep the attention of one of your number ; and to hold 
the attention of this large assemblage is somewhat beyond me. 
But still it is a pleasure to be here, and to see before me so 
many faces of those who claim birth in the dear old country 
across the water ; and it is a pleasure to talk to you upon this 
particular occasion, the day that has become famous around 
the globe, the birthday of Queen Victoria, now celebrated by 
the British people the world over. 

To me and to those of my age in this room the 24th of 
May means but one thing. It is the Queen's Birthday, the 
birthday of The Queen, and probably for all time the woman 
who will be looked upon, whatever may be the brilliancy or 
ability of her successors, by those of us born during her life- 
time, as The Queen. 

It is some ninety-seven years since the day of her birth; 
seventy-nine since she ascended the throne as a young girl; 
seventy-eight years since she was crowned, and some seventy- 
six years since she married Prince Albert, and brought to Eng- 



4 THE VICTORIAN ERA 

land one of the most devoted men who ever served the British 
Empire. 

The Queen and the Empire 

Consider what has happened during what is called the 
Victorian Era, during the period of the Queen's reign. In 
times like this, when the old country is so beset with trouble, 
it is well to remember that the Victorian Era was noted above 
everything else for the development of the arts of peace. I 
think we may all hope that in the years of the twentieth cen- 
tury corresponding to the years of the nineteenth century of 
the Victorian Era the British Empire may again be engaged in 
fifty or sixty or seventy years of peace, and that the people 
who have responded so nobly to the mother country in the day 
of her peril will have the opportunity to reap the rewards of 
peace that we all of us, in this room, at any rate, feel con- 
fident will follow the victorious conclusion of the great struggle 
now going on. 

I think it was Justin McCarthy who says in the "History 
of Our Own Times" that Queen Victoria was the first con- 
stitutional sovereign to occupy the throne of England, and 
that, taking it as a whole, she was by far the best of those who 
have occupied that throne. 

Consider the improvements that came in the Victorian Era 
in the morals and manners of our race, in the drinking habits, 
in the greater diffusion of comfort, in the methods of travel, 
in the transmission of intelligence, including the government 
postal service, in the spread of public education, in the study 
and application of science, in invention and in commerce, in 
industry, in medicine and sanitation, in law-court procedure, 
electoral reform, and in every character of public improve- 
ments. 

Think of the enormous expansion of the British Empire 
that took place during the era of Queen Victoria. Imperialism 
probably can date from the latter end of Queen Victoria's 
reign. It was a realization of what the British Empire was 
intended to bring about. The federation — if not actually gov- 
erHmentally, in spirit and in action — the federation of the Eng- 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 5 

lish-speaking commonwealths grew up during the period of 
Queen Victoria's reign. 

Instance Australia, the birthplace of the distinguished pres- 
ident of the occasion. There were only about 200,000 white 
people in Australia when Queen Victoria came to the throne. 
There were nearly five millions of people, of whom all but a 
very small percentage were of British birth or British lineage, 
on the Australian continent at the time of her death; and 
within the last eighteen months the Australasian colonies have 
sent to the help of the motherland almost as many troops as 
the total population of Australia at the time that Queen Vic- 
toria came to the throne. 

What the British Empire Means 

The opening months of Queen Victoria's reign were marked 
by rebellion in Canada. The close of her reign saw Canada 
one of the most loyal and influential portions of the Empire. 

In Africa and in India also there were great additions to 
the British Empire, and a great enhancement of its prestige, 
during the Victorian Era. A writer in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica says, referring to the beloved Queen : "When she 
died, one square mile in four of the land in the world was 
under the British flag, and at least one person out of every 
five persons alive was a subject of the Queen." 

The area of the British Empire is about 12,000,000 square 
miles out of 52,500,000 square miles of land surface on the 
earth. The population of the United Kingdom in 1841, just 
after Queen Victoria came to the throne, was only a little over 
25,000,000. Today it is between 47,000,000 and 48,000,000, 
and the population of the whole Empire is estimated at about 
400,000,000. 

To show the growth of the British Empire in the Victorian 
Era, it may be mentioned that the British possessions during 
that time in surface probably more than doubled, and in wealth 
a great deal more than quadrupled. The British Empire at 
this time produces one-third of the coal, one-sixth of the wheat 
and nearly two-thirds of the gold supply of the world. 



6 THE VICTORIAN ERA 

Consider some of the material things that our race has bene- 
fited from during the Victorian Era. In looking up some data 
I find that the first railway journey taken by Queen Victoria 
was in June, 1842. She traveled from Windsor to Paddington 
on the Great Western line, and in relation to this incident a 
writer relates the following amusing anecdote : 

The master of the horse, whose business it was to provide 
for the Queen's ordinary journeys by road, was much put 
out by this innovation. He marched into the railway station 
several hours before the start to inspect the engine, as he would 
have examined a steed. Great amusement was occasioned by 
the Queen's coachman, who insisted that, as a matter of right, 
he ought to make believe to drive the engine. After some dis- 
pute he was told that he might climb on to the pilot engine, 
which was to precede the royal train; but his scarlet livery, 
I white gloves and powdered wig suffered so much from the 
soot and smoke that he made no demand for his rights after 
that trip. 

That is relatively a short time ago. If you will just recall, 
in the one matter of transportation, Chicago today is a great 
deal nearer the City of London, even in these hard times of 
travel, than Edinburgh was at the time that Queen Victoria 
ascended the throne. 

Commerce and Invention 

Take the growth of the merchant marine of Great Britain 
— a mighty important subject in these days when the Kaiser's 
submarines are engaged in the fruitless task of destroying 
it. The tonnage in 1837 was 2,800,000. The tonnage at the 
present time is about eight to ten times that; it is somewhere 
near 20,000,000 tons ; and I think it will take a mighty long 
time, whatever may be the activities of the submarines, to 
reduce that tonnage to any very considerable extent. 

Speaking of the mercantile marine of Great Britain, it is 
rather interesting to note that the number of ships destroyed 
by England's enemies following the year of the Battle of Tra- 
falgar was about double as many as the Kaiser's submarines 



THE VICTORIAN ERA / 

have managed to sink in the last year. Naturally at this time 
the tonnage is much greater and the value very much greater ; 
but it is very doubtful whether the relative value of the ton- 
nage sunk in the last year is any greater, when you bear in 
mind the difference in size of the British mercantile marine, 
than was the tonnage sunk the year after the Battle of Tra- 
falgar. 

The first experimental telegraph line was built in England 
the year Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837). The first 
public line, under the direction of Wheatstone and Cooke, was 
laid from Paddington to Slough, near Windsor, on the Great 
Western Railway, in 1843, the year after Queen Victoria took 
her first railway journey. 

Submarine telegraphy was not perfected until years later. 
It was during the latter half of the Victorian Era that the 
present ocean cables were constructed. The first cable was 
put in, if my memory serves me right, in the year 1858 or 1859, 
and failed. Service was permanently established under the 
Atlantic Ocean, owing to the efforts of Mr. Cyrus Field of 
New York, in 1867, and has been in operation ever since. 
Wireless telegraphy was a product of the Victorian Era. In 
fact, if you will go over the whole history of transportation, 
of communication by signals, of communication by word of 
mouth over the wire, that whole development has revolution- 
ized the relations of the people of the world, and it took place 
(during the period that Queen Victoria was on the throne. 

The Making of History 

Great constitutional changes came in Queen Victoria's time. 
Great Britain did not know what real representative govern- 
ment was, as we understand it today, and as the world under- 
stands it, until after the Queen came to the throne. The Re- 
form Bill of 1832 gave some concessions in the direction of 
public representation, but it was not until Queen Victoria had 
come to the throne some fifteen or twenty years that the fran- 
chise was extended generally to small property owners and 
householders. 



8 THE VICTORIAN EEA 

Mentioning the principal events during Queen Victoria's 
reign, the Chartist riots of 1839 should receive attention. The 
demands made at that time by the radical Chartists would 
seem to be very conservative if such demands were being 
made today. 

The repeal of the Corn Laws led to a radical change in the 
fiscal system of the United Kingdom and the building up of 
England's vast commerce with all the world. 

The first International Exhibition was a great historical 
event. It was held at South Kensington in 1851, the land that 
the exposition occupied at that time being just south of the 
Albert Memorial, which most of you who go to London know 
so well. 

The Crimean War took place in 1854-1856, when England 
and France and Italy were fighting their present great ally, 
Russia, and probably were laying the basis of a great many of 
the troubles which we have had in the past and are having 
today in Southeastern Europe. 

The Indian Mutiny was in 1857 and 1858, when the valor 
displayed by the small body of Englishmen there aroused the 
admiration of the world. Following the mutiny, the reorgan- 
ization of the administration of India, and bringing it in line 
with the wise administration that has been so generally adopted 
during the Victorian Era in England's crown colonies, gradu- 
ally led to that loyalty which found its final expression in the 
autumn of 1914, when the Indian troops, at a moment of very 
great necessity, came across the world to France, and fought 
for the Empire. 

All of us are familiar with the later events of the Victorian 
Era and with the creation of Queen Victoria as Empress of 
India. At the time that Earl Beaconsfield suggested it, the 
proposal met with a great deal of criticism, but the probability 
is that that act was the start of the closer relations that have 
grown up beween England and not only her crown colonies, 
but her great self-governing colonies throughout the world. 

I might go on talking for a long time about the things that 
have been given to the world by Queen Victoria, and the great 



THE VICTORIAN ERA y 

era during which she reigned; but you have other speakers 
to hear from, and I will draw my remarks to a close. 

But before I sit down, I want to talk on one subject that I 
always try to refer to whenever I appear before people who 
have the same blood that I have flowing in my veins and yet 
who have made their homes in this country. 

A Word to Americans of British Birth 

I think that we American citizens of British birth — and I 
imagine that most of you ladies, especially the older ones, are 
either married to American citizens, and are consequently 
American citizens yourselves by act of marriage, or else you 
are the mothers of young men who are growing up as Ameri- 
can citizens, and young girls who will probably marry Ameri- 
can citizens — I think that the greatest thing that we of British 
birth, whether we come from the mother country or the col- 
onies, can do at this time, when this country is more or less 
wrought up over the rival views and rival positions of some of 
her citizens — I think the greatest service that we can render, 
not only to this country, but our mother country, is to be in 
every respect true to the oath of allegiance that we took when 
'we became citizens of this country. 

I can only repeat to you what I said a few weeks ago to 
the Sons of St. George Society. We owe a great deal to this 
country. We owe everything to it except birth, and what we 
all love so much, that liberty which was given us by the mother 
country, from which we spring. But we owe our opportunities 
in life to this country. We do not want to be British-Ameri- 
cans here; we do not want to be English- Americans or Irish- 
Americans or Scotch- Americans. We want to be Americans ! 

The country that we come from has given the world the 
best form of constitutional government. The country that we 
have adopted and that we live in, and to which we have sworn 
allegiance, is carrying out constitutional government in the 
most liberal and democratic way that it is possible to carry it 
out under the conditions that exist here. What we want to 
do is to work for one thing. We want to work for the per- 



10 THE VICTORIAN ERA 

petuation of the great race from which we spring, and unless 
this great democracy is a success and can go along hand in 
hand with the English-speaking peoples of the world after all 
these troubles are over, the institutions which the country of 
our birth gave the world, and which the country of our adop- 
tion has so wonderfully utilized, must fail. What we need 
here, above everything else, and what will be needed through- 
out the English-speaking world above everything else, whether 
it is under the Stars and Stripes, or under the Union Jack, is 
the assimilation of all races who live under these flags. And 
we, as American citizens, if we fulfill our duty, our obligations 
of citizenship, will see to it that there is no "hyphen" used in 
discussing us as a class, and that in dealing with our duties as 
citizens of this country, we have but one thought in mind, and 
that is acting the part of true citizens of this great republic and 
performing the duties of citizenship as may appear to us as 
citizens of the United States of America. 



